Avie's Charm

Avie quickly swapped with me, bursting with speed straight over to Fico's position before slamming it straight into her neck. She caught the strike with ease and planted her 3 claws on my leg.

"Too slow, even for you," Fico mentioned.

She lobbed off my leg like it was nothing, throwing it far away into the edge of the dome before it disintegrated into nothing, being thrown into the mix of Cynthia's wild abilities.

Avie hit the ground after a long attack and hit a burst of speed toward Austin. Her heel was planted into his stomach three times before he could react, and then into his jaw to launch him into the air.

She caught him in midair, threw him toward the ground, and launched herself with her feet pointing at the ground, pushing him into the floor and causing it to crack.

Then, she backflipped, over Cynthia's saber, and broke Cynthia's wrist before kicking it off toward her head.

Avie was far too fast for me to comprehend, even if it was in my body, and smashed her leg into the skulls of Cynthia, Fico, and Austin once more.

She landed on the ground, sliding through a few inches of dirt, and swapping with me once more.

"I can't... I'm out of stamina again!" She shouted to me.

"Already?! You moved like six times... is everything okay?" I asked her, waiting for an answer while looking through the battlefield for everybody else.

"Yeah... It's just... being mad drains my energy," She said.

"Do you get it now? How her stamina works yet? I would know a little, considering I can do what she can," Cole explained to me.

He... can...?

"I get it, Avie, it's part of the reason I haven't done it yet. It limits you, doesn't it? It's just too bad you don't have your own body, and all you are is just a parasite... doesn't that suck, to be so useless?" Cole asked her. I felt her get angrier in my head.

"Let me kill him... LET ME!" Avie yelled out. I held her back, for the time being, suffering the headache that followed. She was uncontrollable!

"Avie... stop freaking out over this, just let me handle it. I'll call upon you when I need to," I told her. That upset her even more, as it directly went against what I clarified for her earlier.

We could no longer work together because ironically, it was the anger that blinded her. I couldn't be biased about it, and I was only being hypocritical.

"Please, just let me figure things out!" I said to her in my head. She didn't like that answer and got even more mad.

"What's the matter, a little bit of interpersonal conflict? Come on guys, don't get so mad, we have so much more fighting to do!" Fico shouted out. She was smiling, knowing that we would lose if we kept doing this.

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"Avie... what's going on with you?" I asked her within my own mind space. Luckily, I could come here whenever I wanted to, although some time would pass slowly in the real world.

"You don't get it... it's... I... I am a failure of your A.I., to keep it short," Avie said. She didn't seem mad anymore... only disappointed.

"Why does that matter, now, of all times? It never mattered before, I don't understand. Are they making you self-conscious? Talk to me, please," I sincerely said to Avie. I couldn't have anything like that happening right now, not when it mattered most.

"It's... about the past. About an event, a long time ago, I'm cursed to remember and never forget. The day you died, Sky, it could be whittled down to my fault. My inability to become my own being... to use my own power... to use my own stamina. I guess I get why everybody talks about the Deity of Wrath as they do... it is very limiting," Avie said. She was scanning her hands, made of strands in the mind space.

All Avie was in the mind space was a face like mine and hands made from strands. She had no body as of right now.

I paused for a moment, considering what she said about the past. To think... somebody else felt the lasting guilt of letting a friend die after all that time, even four hundred years, which was so much more compared to a few months... it doesn't go away?

Then... how do I get rid of mine?

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My arm shot up out of instinct and I blocked an attack for Fico. I should've known that my time was limited with her already high base speed.

"You can't hoard all the fun without us!" She shouted out. Fico kicked me in the chest and launched me up the crater, so hard that I bounced, and decided to land on my back to throw Cole off.

Cole and Austin were running around the crater at a high speed, trying to get to me to block me off. However, because of the water lines that exploded in the crater, I pushed out Belle's Ability from my body, freezing my surroundings and letting it grow in that crater filling with water.

It shot out a huge ice spire, and I got a chance to breathe while observing it from under.

Huge ice crystals started to fall from the top of the expanding spire of ice in the middle. My life reduction increased in time, this time by ten days. Using these abilities would eventually end my life.

"Avie, still good in there?" I asked inside my head... but nothing came up. She was silent, dead silent.

"Avie, you're still with me, aren't you?" I asked yet again. Nothing appeared.

"We've had it all wrong... Sky..." Avie finally started. Her voice was gloomy and dull, and I could feel her stare getting heavier as if she was falling asleep.

"We've been running from it... running from our Wrath to become better people... but you should understand that to beat Quake, we don't need to be better people. This self-justifying morality that we're supposed to have, as leaders, it's bullshit. Total fucking bullshit... why don't we give in to the Wrath? Why don't we stomp Quake?" Avie asked me.

She was falling into Wrath... and I was being pulled along.